At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, execs from Adobe and Nokia mapped out their plans for the future of Web application design for mobile devices -- and the design of the devices themselves.

Touting a linkage between application developers and designers, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch demonstrated the company's planned Flash Catalyst product at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco. Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president at the company, cited planned form factors for mobile devices, which included a wearable wristband unit. He also hailed location-based services and the planned Ovi applications store, set to debut in June, that will bring applications to consumers.

Flash Catalyst currently is in a beta release phase but is due soon, Lynch said.

"We can enable people who do design to express not only what an application should look like but how it should feel to interact with," he said. Users can import a design from a picture, such as from Adobe Illustrator, bring shapes into Catalyst, and turn them into the beginnings of an application. Lynch also noted Adobe this week combined APIs in the Flash platform with Facebook.

At Nokia, the company is eyeing location-based services that will require a mobile computer-like device that marries "virtuality with reality," Vanjoki said. "Nokia has a big lead in this development," he said.

Users, meanwhile, will see new form factors for wireless devices, such as an ear device or a wearable device similar to a bracelet, and some devices even will be self-cleaning.

Conference attendees on Thursday also heard from Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunligtht Foundation. "Our goal has been really to use the Internet to catalyze greater openness and transparency in government," she said. Within government, officials claim to be in favor of transparency, but there are not a lot who really understand technology, Miller said.

US government spending on information projects was questioned by Miller, who cited a new government Web site called recovery.gov that reportedly will cost US$86 million to create. "I suspect there's a way to do it a lot cheaper," she said. "That figure is dumbfounding to me."